In desolate places we’ll find our bread
Bob Marley, Trench Town, Confrontation, 1983.
Soul Rebels
The world’s mood is dark. Suddenly every political analyst seems to agree that these are troubled times.
According to Adam Tooze, even the term “polycrisis”, which he reinvented to describe the time we are in, has become passé.
Read: Chartbook 461: Polycrisis & nostalgia for lost futures.
Global heating has evolved to global burning. Literally and politically.
Read a new essay by Rebecca Solnit: We launched a war on nature. Now we are in a climate war zone
If you are living in a war of other people’s making, a fire or famine of another government’s making, a disease of another companies’ making, a genocide of bombing with another countries’ bombs, it’s even darker.
Elites profit from these problems.
Ordinary people are going to have to solve them.
It’s hard.
It’s really hard. Dwell in these photos to try and imagine life in a time of genocide: Gaza Through The Eyes Of Its Photographers; Gaza Habibti
But while we endure, there’s still music, poetry, imagination, athletic excellence, to feed our souls. And that’s often all that keeps our spirits alive.
As the hard rains start to fall (thanks Bob Dylan) we dig deeper into the wellsprings of our human being.
As Bob Marley wrote, even in desolate places we find our bread: In Gaza musicians have reopened a bomb-shattered conservatory – in tents.
In South Africa, our communities may be riddled with drugs, guns and gangs, but that can’t stop the making of music by organizations like the Field Bank Foundation.
Read: Young musicians lead vibrant Mamelodi parade
As Nick Cave, one of my favourite artists, writes in his book Faith, Hope and Carnage there’s poetry in music and music in poetry. Right now we need both. That’s why, across the world “poetry is booming” because it’s the only language for these times of violence and chaos.”
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Authoritarians fear the music.
So, I say, thank you for the music
Recently, Germany deported Bob Vylan for Anti-Israel Chants; and Massive Attack was banned in Singapore for unfurling a Palestinian flag.
Radical new trends in music always get appropriated, normalized and neutered.
Think of the Sex Pistols or N.W.A.
But just as quickly something new bubbles up, by-passing the constraints, finding its way to the soul.
If they could, the oligarchs would capture music and repurpose it for hate and division.
So watch out.
Don’t let them.
In 2025 more than 1,000 musicians banded together to resist AI being given freedom to ‘train’ (steal) on their music. They produced a silent protest album, Is This What We Want?
The danger the musicians foresaw was that if AI becomes a dominant ‘creator’ of music, music could be turned from being a source of unity to division; love to hate; rebellion to surrender.
Read: When machines sing: Can AI imitate the human soul? By Kavisha Pilay
The power of music was again revealed with the crowds that turned out in Swansea, Wales, for Bonnie Tyler’s funeral. It prompted me to think, as I did at the time of Shane McGowan’s death:
The death of Dolly Parton says much the same.
Reasons to be cheerful, part 23
Bongeziwe Mabandla has a beautiful new collection of songs, thrumming with the spirits of his homeland South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Listen to Bongeziwe Mabandla - Jikeleza
The reasons why we must resist the dismantling of human rights law are evident in two big legal victories, also coming from the Eastern Cape. Public interest litigation can’t change the world, but it can put a stake in the sand - in this case literally.
In a David and Goliath battle the Amadiba Crisis Committee, a community based social justice organisation heroically protecting the coast and communal lands of the Amadiba, has won against petro-giant Shell in SA’s constitutional court.
Read: Concourt Shell Ruling Amadiba Crisis Committee welcome the ruling
the judgement is available here
Hot on its heels the Eastern Cape Education Department was forced into an Order of Court, after it admitted it has unlawfully withheld billions from public schools for the poorest children in the province. The practice will stop. But sadly they are not required to pay back the money.
Activists bookshelf: Rethinking Activism
I’m proud to announce the publication of a new book, based on an idea that I have cradled from conception two years ago to birth.
It’s a collection of original and inspiring essays by 14 social justice activists from across Africa, published by the brave independent publisher Jacana Media.
Funnily enough, it’s not quite the book I imagined.
It has much more life, voice, identity, diversity and joy. I’m from the school of dry political analysis, the school whose lack of imagination failed to protect us from the ravages of neo-liberalism.
This new school has politics without dogma, sees sites of struggle that I didn’t imagine existed, unleashes voices that are bypassed in ‘mainstream’ media discussions about how to advance Africa and Africans.
Drop your prejudices and preconceptions about what a political book should read like, open your minds and go with the flow of these activists’ experiences and ideas.
Free the agent of justice and equality that you aspire to be.
Order Rethinking Activism in Africa from sales@jacana.co.za and visit their exciting website www.jacana.co.za
On your bike, mate
In the Thatcher era in Britain British Cabinet member and general nasty bastard Norman Tebbit drew derision when he suggested that, rather than riot, the unemployed should “get on their bikes” and go and seek work.
As usual, musicians like Billy Bragg had a response: Listen to Billy Bragg ‘Which Side Are You On’ and ‘Between the Wars’ live
In mid-September I’ll be getting on my bike to look for joy.
I’ll be trying to ride 600kms across South Africa’s beautiful geography from the Maloti mountains to the Indian Ocean coast. Riding Go2sea is for fun, self-doubt, solitude, sufferation, exhaustion and – somewhere in the mix – joy.
In South Africa, joy and despair are neighbors; pain and plenty live on the same streets; our most beautiful lands are also our most hungry lands.
So I’m using the opportunity to raise money for the fight against hunger and malnutrition, to build community power to fight for the right of everyone to have sufficient food, and cash to take on hunger-monger corporates like Shoprite Checkers who profit from hunger.
Please donate to the Union Against Hunger here.
There’s music in our bodies. Exercise releases it. Millions more people are discovering this through social movements like parkrun, which nearly 500,000 people across 20+ countries join every Saturday morning.
Like music, it’s hard for the ‘downpressor men’, as Peter Tosh famously called them, to take the spirit away.
“In desolate places we’ll find our bread.”
Don’t believe me? Want to be inspired? Read about the Palestine Marathon, held in early May in Gaza.
The human spirit is indomitable.
It will recover from slings, arrows and drones. It defies outrageous misfortune. Though it might be hard to see, it’s the oppressor’s time that is running out, not ours. And their ever more shameless cruelty and mongery shows that they know it.
Love and Peace,
Mark
Heywood
This newsletter aims to be a resource as much as a read. Follow the links. Written and researched by a human being. No AI involved.
The Justice and Activism Hub is a change tank for a time of change. We are committed to strengthening social justice struggles through connection, collaboration, coordination, convening and catalysing.
News from JAH is also now available here on Substack. The playlist of songs that I feature is available here. If you enjoyed this newsletter please forward it to other soul rebels. You can also contact me at markjamesheywood@gmail.com